Preterite or Imperfect-hubo or había

Question

Okay, guys, I know what you are going to say: preterite is finished action, imperfect is not, etc.

However, I want to know if this is correct: Había mucho hielo or Hubo mucho hielo. On my vocab sheet, it only says, "había hielo."I don't know why it says that. My sentence is "Hoy había hielo en Peru." Also, my Spanish teacher said with weather, you always use imperfect. Never preterite. However, is this a weather condition: Hoy hubo un gran huracan por las islas de Venezuela. I don't understand. IS preterite correct? She wrote this sentence.

Also, is it "hubo mucho humo y llamas" correct? I am referring to both grammar and tense. OR is it había mucho humo y llamas.

Thanks

Answer 1

Spanish teachers, in an effort to make our lives easier, often make blanket statements with 'always' and 'never' like yours did, but there are always exceptions. OK, all teachers, naturally.

It's what you already know. If it was a very specific time, preterite (There was ice on the ground already by 7 P.M.). Or if it was a sudden change in the weather. Luego, cambió el tiempo y de repente, hubo hielo. but otherwise, usually imperfect, since a given general weather condition in the past generally occurred over a period time, that is often not well defined. It´s not hard and fast as your prof said, and as evika has already kindly confirmed, but weather will tend towards the imperfect.

Just a general note on hubo and había. I remember struggling with these (and still do some) but have over time observed, that one comes across había very much more frequently than hubo in everyday speech. You can come up with plenty of scenarios where just one would apply, but even more where it could be either. I´m pretty sure a standard word frequency analysis (common tool among linguists) would show había being Much more common. I miss having cool tools like that as I did in school many years ago.

Answer 2

I read your post, ...I'm Spanish and I'm still wondering if there is any difference. ALL the sentences you wrote sound pretty good to me. I guess you can use both forms when you're talking about weather...

I did so - 0080b918, Mar 13, 2013

Sorry. Please clarify. I still would like some more opinions please. Thank you so much though :) - randomguy123, Mar 13, 2013

Answer 3

someone please help.